The first is a Tag Heuer automatic that I bought six years ago and had, until recently, worn every day. It looks the way a watch is supposed to look, requires no batteries, and is waterproof to 1000 feet (because over-engineering).

The second is an Apple Watch that I bought just a couple of months ago. I’ve worn it almost every day since. It’s the nice, stainless steel version, but with the basic “sport” band. It’s not waterproof but can probably be worn in the shower (I don’t).

I love the Tag. I love its design, construction, feel, everything. I beat on it without fear of scratches or breakage. It should last the rest of my life. And again, it doesn’t require batteries of any kind.

I like the Apple Watch, but I don’t love it. It feels good for the most part. I will probably buy a nicer band at some point, but the actual watch is solid, smooth, and substantial. It doesn’t feel nearly as hardy as the Tag, and I don’t dare wear it near dirt or water.

I don’t like Apple Watch’s square face. A few square-faced watches are attractive to me. Apple’s isn’t one of them. Watches are round, and projecting a round, digital face onto a square device doesn’t help.

Battery life is another issue. The Apple Watch’s battery life is darn good for a smart watch but terrible for a watch I wish to wear every day. If I don’t charge it overnight, I can’t wear it the next day. Blech. In fact, forgetting to charge the Watch has forced me to wear the automatic a few times, each time reminding me how much I like the Tag.

But the Apple Watch is smart. Being smart is, of course, a significant advantage over a simple automatic watch. The problem is, Apple Watch doesn’t work very well. The worst thing is that the face doesn’t always come on when I expect it to, which reduces its value as an actual watch. Twisting my arm around and finally giving up and tapping the face isn’t great. And forget trying to talk on it all Dick Tracy style. That never works well.

Other problems are minor but annoying. One is that apps take too long to launch and connect. I don’t even bother using Runkeeper on the Watch since it’s faster to pull out the phone and launch the app. It shouldn’t be. I have no idea how the Health and Activity apps are supposed to work together. I “start a workout” and walk a couple of brisk miles, but that somehow doesn’t count toward my Activity goal. This makes no sense to me. Dismissing notifications is a hit or miss affair. I force-press to “dismiss all” and sometimes it works, sometimes not.

And after everything, I suspect that the Apple Watch will feel outdated in a year or two. The Tag Heuer is more, ahem, timeless.

There are lots of things I love about the Apple Watch. Having my next appointment and the current temperature right there on the Watch face is great. I love that notifications are now all silent and I can quickly determine whether I need to pull out my phone or not. Always-on fitness and heart rate tracking is nice.

I love the idea and potential of the Apple Watch, but don’t love the actual Watch.

You just knew I was going to end up with a reel-to-reel deck some day. Or as I like to call it, reel-to-real.

Many of the GRAMC films include a separate audio track on 1/4-inch magnetic tape. I had no way to play the audio so I bought the above Sony TC-378 from a local record store. It’s probably overkill but it’s pretty cool.

The TC-378 was manufactured in 1976. From what I gather it’s a pretty decent unit with many spare parts still available if it needs service.

Ello launched last year and of course I signed up as soon as I could. It was hyped at the time as the “anti-Facebook”. This appealed to me since I’m rather anti-Facebook myself.

But I was disappointed. I found the layout and typography to be a little too quirky, and it seemed there were more bugs than people. I posted a few things, followed a few people, and soon forgot about Ello.

As I become more privacy-aware, sites like Ello become more attractive. From Ello & Your Data:

Ello is a Public Benefit Corporation, with a legal obligation to never display paid third party advertising, sell user data to a third party, or sell our company to anyone that would ever do any of those things.

That seems like a good thing. The cynics among us respond with “But it’s a free service so they’ll have to sell ads eventually”. Perhaps, but at least Ello is trying to do the right thing. That’s a good start. Plus, the odd typographical and layout choices are beginning to grow on me. At first I thought it was simply a trying-too-hard attempt at being different. Now, I’m more inclined to simply enjoy the differences. It’s peaceful there.

I hope Ello survives because I think we can use a privacy-aware social network catering to the creative and other communities.

]]>http://baty.net/2015/one-roll-of-film-youtube/feed/0Done using offlineimaphttp://baty.net/2015/done-using-offlineimap/
http://baty.net/2015/done-using-offlineimap/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 04:00:00 +0000http://baty.net/?p=4757I have been using OfflineIMAP, on and off, for a long time. The reason it’s been “on and off” is that once in a while I’ll have some inexplicable problem and give up and just access my IMAP accounts directly. A few months pass and I wonder why I stopped using offlineIMAP and so I update the configuration and the circle begins again.

This time I’m writing it down. I love having all my Gmail messages stored locally in simple text files. This makes things fast and everything works even while offline. That sounds great, but the fact is I’m never offline. I don’t think I’ve taken advantage of that “advantage” even once. Running directly to IMAP isn’t that slow anyway.

I went to bed last night after weeks of everything working fine. First time I tried running offlineIMAP this morning it couldn’t find the Archive folder and everything failed. No new mail for me. Nothing on my end had changed, but things just stopped working. That sort of thing drives me nuts. It’s not worth the fuss, so back to my direct-to-IMAP mutt configuration.

]]>http://baty.net/2015/this-is-not-natural/feed/0http://baty.net/2015/4728/
http://baty.net/2015/4728/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 23:49:46 +0000http://baty.net/?p=4728The web is a mess. I’m this close to disabling JavaScript by default and turning it back on only when necessary.
]]>http://baty.net/2015/4728/feed/0With Flash goes a lot of contenthttp://baty.net/2015/with-flash-goes-a-lot-of-content/
http://baty.net/2015/with-flash-goes-a-lot-of-content/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 23:19:00 +0000http://baty.net/?p=4724There are many good reasons for getting rid of Flash, and I wouldn’t dream of arguing against it. What concerns me is that if browser makers decide to set a “killbit” which prevents any use of Flash, what happens to all the Flash-only content created over the years? Many projects aren’t worth rewriting in HTML5 or whatever just to avoid their delivery mechanism. That doesn’t make them worthless. Is anyone thinking about this?
]]>http://baty.net/2015/with-flash-goes-a-lot-of-content/feed/0